Vancouver

Lending in Vancouver

Vancouver is a major market of 662,248 people squeezed into just over 115 square kilometers. Because the city is geographically locked between the ocean, the Fraser River, and the mountains, there is no room to expand outward. The only direction to build is up. With a 4.9% population growth rate since 2016, the pressure on the local housing market remains intense, forcing density into every available block.

For mortgage brokers, this tight geography dictates the inventory. Single-detached houses make up just 14.7% of the housing stock. The vast majority of the city is dominated by low-rise apartments at 31.2%, duplexes at 17.8%, and row houses at 3.5%. It is a high-cost, high-density environment where buyers pay a massive premium to secure a piece of real estate, often driven by the desire to keep commutes reasonable in a city where the average commute time sits at 28.4 minutes.

The local economy is highly sophisticated, backed by a workforce where 75.9% of residents hold post-secondary education and 52.8% have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Top industries like professional, scientific, and technical services lead the market at 14.7%, followed closely by healthcare and education. This highly educated demographic, combined with Vancouver’s status as a global destination for capital, keeps the real estate market running on its own high-frequency wavelength.

Because of this constant influx of domestic and international wealth, the Vancouver market is incredibly saturated with capital. Every major bank, credit union, and Lower Mainland MIC is constantly tripping over themselves to fund Yaletown condos, Kitsilano duplexes, and East Van townhomes. There is simply too much local money chasing too few deals.

This heavy saturation is exactly why Tekamar does not write deals here.

We are based in Salmon Arm, and we built our fund by focusing entirely on the parts of British Columbia that urban lenders ignore. We often call ourselves “the MIC for towns without stoplights.” We know the Okanagan, the Kootenays, Vancouver Island, and the north. We understand how to lend in places like Grand Forks, Merritt, or Port Alberni because we actually know those local economies. Vancouver is the polar opposite of our business model.

If you have a Point Grey teardown or a downtown pre-sale, you already have dozens of local lenders competing for it. We stick to our territory, which means our maximum loan to value in Vancouver is a flat 0%. We do not lend here.

But if your borrower needs equity financing, a bridge loan, or debt consolidation in a secondary or tertiary market, give us a shout. We will leave the downtown core to the downtown lenders while we handle the rest of the province.